I recently reset my computer and copy my music from an external hard drive to my itunes library. When I click on a song to play i get an error message that says " the song could not be used because the original file could not be found". need help

Question

I recently reset my computer and copy my music from an external hard drive to my itunes library.  When I click on a song to play i get an error message that says " the song could not be used because the original file could not be found".  But when I have my external hard drive plug in the song will play with no problem.  What do I need to do to play my music without having the external harddrive plug in ????????  Please help

Answer 1

Because the location for each song in your library is on your hard drive.  If the hard drive isn't there, how can iTunes play it?
You'll have to move/copy the music from your hard drive to your computer's hard drive.
Basically, EASIEST way to do all this, if you don't care about your play counts, etc...
-Delete EVERYTHING from iTunes, so that your library is now empty.
-Go to "Advanced" inside of the "Preferences" window, found in the "Edit" drop-down.  You can also access Preferences by pressing Ctrl+, (Press Ctrl and the comma key)
-Change your iTunes Media Folder Location to something simple, but on your computer. I use C:/iTunes.  Make sure "Keep iTunes Media Folder Organized" and "Copy files to...." are both checked.  You can close Preferences now.
-Now, drag and drop your music from your hard drive into your iTunes library.  iTunes will automatically add the music to your library, as you would expect, and also creates a copy of each file to place into that iTunes Media Folder you just created.
Shouldn't have any more problems...